


I'm Gonna Get Home If I Try

by DefaltManifesto



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Growth, Character Study, Emotional Constipation, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 12:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9272075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefaltManifesto/pseuds/DefaltManifesto
Summary: Vincent holds everyone at an arm's length.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BoywithApple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoywithApple/gifts).



> I had a lot of fun writing this - this is the fastest I've written this many words in some time. I might write more Vincent fics in the future now...
> 
> Hope you like it, comments are loved. 
> 
> Title from Edge of the World by Within Temptation

[The tumblr](http://schizzar.tumblr.com)

 

There are few people who have treated Vincent like he was normal after realizing the monsters he carried inside him. The first was Cloud. That man had listened to his warnings and then accepted him anyways. Given the ragtag state of their team, he supposed someone who turned into raging monsters sometimes uncontrollably wasn’t really high on their list of shocking things.

Besides, Cloud had his fair share of demons too, his just didn’t manifest like Vincent’s. He spends a lot of time wondering, as they fight Lucretia’s bastard child, if it’s easier to deal with his own demons because there’s something to actually fight within himself instead of a fucked up memory and mental instability without a name or shape. There’s no one to blame for Cloud, just the mostly unexplainable sciences of the Lifestream. At least Vincent can name his corrupter.

But despite the kinship he feels for Cloud, and despite knowing that Cloud feels the same, they never really talk about it. Their similarities lie between them with the occasional look of understanding when the fighting gets hard and when they’re run down and struggling to keep going. After defeating Sephiroth though, he has no reason to keep lingering around Cloud or the others, so Vincent leaves.

 

-.-

 

The second person to look at him that way is Elena when he’s wiping her face down with a wet cloth and inspecting the wounds she’d suffered at Kadaj and the other’s hands. She’s worse for wear, but it’s nothing a Turk can’t handle. He tells her as much when he resets her broken arm and ties up a crude splint made from the branch of one of the trees in the Ancients’ forest.

“I didn’t expect you of all people to come for us,” she says. “We’re Shinra lapdogs I thought.”

Vincent glances at Tseng who’s still passed out a few feet away. “I have no loyalty to Shinra, but you’re of no use to us being Kadaj’s plaything either.”

“Did Rufus ask you to come for us?” she asks, grabbing his hand and pulling it away from her face. She doesn’t let go.

“No.” Vincent stares down at his hand gripped between hers. He’s not sure why, but there’s something about the touch that makes him want to lean into her and ask for more, arms around his shoulders. He doesn’t though. He craves touch – he has for years. He’s never been offered it before though.

“Then why? Really?” she asks. “You could’ve left us for dead.”

Vincent wonders if he should repay her kindness with a real response. Instead he tugs his hand out of hers and goes back to cleaning her face up and after that, she stops trying to talk to him. After Cloud’s battle against Sephiroth, Vincent wonders if he’d be going back to his own apartment alone if he had bothered to try and be honest with her, tell her that he didn’t want anyone else suffering because of someone’s sadistic streak. He’d been at the mercy of another man’s sadism.

 

-.-

 

Yuffie is a revelation. He hadn’t realized that she didn’t really care much about his afflictions back when they were fighting for their lives against Sephiroth, but then she’d been sixteen and he’d been more than a little enamored with Cloud. When she comes back into his life though, the conflict with Deepground and the creature lurking in his DNA makes it impossible to risk letting her in.

He thinks that maybe in another time they could’ve been something more – he could’ve really let her in instead of holding her at an arm’s length even as he let her closer than anyone else had been in a while. There’s more for her though. He knows there is. All he could ever do was hold her back.

 

-.-

 

Weiss is like Cloud in that Vincent feels a kinship with him after the conflict. He’s dead and gone, and he and his group had wrought an insurmountable amount of pain and struggle on the Planet in the process, but Vincent can’t help but sympathize with him. To know something is lurking in your veins just outside, poisoning you from the inside out. He spends sometime after it all thinking about him.

He doesn’t think too long though. He’s starting to learn that wondering about what ifs never gets him anywhere good.

 

-.-

 

He finds forgiveness through Shelke and more than anyone before, he wonders if maybe he should stop running from connection. But Shelke is free for the first time in years. She can choose what she wishes to do, experience life the way she’s meant to. So like Yuffie, Vincent resists her attempts to stay close friends. He’s unwilling to make the same mistake he made with Lucretia by letting her lean on him or trust him.

 

-.-

 

It isn’t until a year after the conflict with Deepground that Vincent realizes he’s been ignoring the one person who’s been by his side longer than anyone else. The realization hits him when he stops by the same hotel he’d stayed in four months ago just outside the recovering city of Kalm and there’s a small package waiting for him from Reeve Tuesti.

“The guy dropped it off like, two months ago and has been paying us to keep it here,” the guy at the front desk says. “Is he like a creepy stalker or something?”

Vincent hands over the money for the room and grabs the package and key off the counter before walking away without a response. When he gets to his room, the first thing he does is take a seat on the end of the bed and unwrap the plain brown package wrap to reveal a small, slim box. Inside is a small key and a folded up note.

 

            _Wandering is great. It’s nice to have a home to come back to._

_-Reeve_

Under that is an address in a small town he passed through months ago south of Nibelheim. During the Deepground conflict, Reeve had given Vincent his phone number. Vincent had lost his cell phone a while ago though and hadn’t bothered to replace it or get any other numbers. It seems like an uncharacteristic amount of kindness until her thinks about it. Out of everyone, Reeve had been there the most, even if half of that time he’d been operating a robotic cat.

Mostly though, he’d faded to the back of Vincent’s mind. Reeve had been a business partner really, never trying to dig his way inside Vincent and make him talk like the others had, but unlike Cloud, he’d been present in a way that was…comforting in his familiarity. He hadn’t been feeling lonely wandering around the Planet, but now with the key sitting in its box taunting him, he finds himself longing for somewhere to settle.

He can’t remember the last time he felt that way.

 

-.-

 

When he shows up at the house, a small one-story cabin like structure outside the town and surrounded by trees, he’s not expecting anyone to be there. When he steps inside though, Reeve is sleeping on the couch in the main room and the floor is strewn with bits and pieces of parts meant to assemble some sort of robot or device. He all at once feels like he’s intruding and for a moment he almost leaves.

Instead, he gives an awkward cough.

It’s enough of a noise for Reeve to startle awake, flailing off the couch and aiming a gun at him before his eyes widen. He gives a deep sigh and goes slack, tucking the gun back into his jacket. Vincent raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry, was I not supposed to come?” he asks.

"No, I just wasn’t expecting you so soon,” Reeve says.

“You left the package there for several months,” Vincent says. “That’s soon?”

“With you it could be,” Reeve says. “I should explain, now that you’re here. This is my…summer home I guess you could say, a place away from the WRO where I can collect my thoughts. I’m not here often but I thought perhaps it could be a home base for you when you feel like taking a break.”

“Why?”

He’s not expecting the question to prompt a flush in Reeve’s cheeks.

"Ah…well, frankly Vincent, I consider you a close friend, even if you don’t feel the same. I wanted to offer something to you after you’ve done so much for me even when you were reluctant to get involved,” Reeve says.

“So quid pro quo?”

Reeve shakes his head. “No, not that simple. I care about you Vincent. When you feel like settling…this place will be here for you. You deserve a place to call your own just like the rest of us, whether you think you deserve it or not.”

Vincent nods. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Reeve raises both of his eyebrows. “Honestly I expected you to leave and perhaps never speak with me again.”

“I guess…I’m thinking it’s about time I stop running,” Vincent says. He drops his bag by the door. “And not many people want me to stay without a promise of knowing all my secrets in return.”

“To be fair, I know most of them already,” Reeve says.

Vincent’s lips crook up into a shade of a smile. “I guess you do.”

 

-.-

 

Vincent kisses Reeve for the first time three months later. It’s the longest he’s stayed in one place in a while. He’s liking the idea of not running anymore.


End file.
